Twin Peaks Is Back, But It's Not Here to Appease You

Among the many jarring elements of the "new" Twin Peaks, the most unsettling is its visual style. The soft, grainy, filmic quality of the original and its warm tones, '50s vibrance, and soap-inspired lighting are almost entirely gone. Now, 26 years later, the lush film stock has been replaced by stark digital photography. The sharp images have also taken on a dimmer tinge—so many shades of grey. But far from attempting the usual tricks signaling cinematic artistry common to "Prestige TV," Twin Peaks exudes no fussiness about its visual palette. Director David Lynch shoots these new episodes with the same functionality of the show's original iteration, only now the technology has changed, the look has been updated, and with it some suggestion of where Twin Peaks might take us in 2017.

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The first two hours of Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired to incredible hype last night, begin with a scene from the original series finale. "I'll see you again in 25 years," Laura Palmer tells Agent Cooper in a red draped room at the Black Lodge, and after a new credit sequence set to the same old theme music, we are back in the world of Twin Peaks. It feels different, and it should. Time has passed, and Lynch isn't interested in ignoring the fact.

The visual scheme resembles much of Lynch's experimentation in digital filmmaking since his last feature, Inland Empire. The atonal ethos of that film and the short video works Lynch has made since are present now in Twin Peaks. The soap-inflected surreal fantasy of the original series feels comforting in retrospect. Lynch has moved into a new space of horror, informed by the technology inside his camera, and the technology he puts on screen. A world once distanced by film grain and dollops of nostalgia is now captured in sharp electronic relief, and as Lynch begins to explore it once again, its rigid modern structures feel like they're breaking apart.

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For a series which might amount to little more than another television reunion, Twin Peaks: The Return is steadfastly unconcerned with appeasing its audience.

For a series which might amount to little more than another television reunion, Twin Peaks: The Return is steadfastly unconcerned with appeasing its audience. The digital style is only a signal. The rest of the show, too, feels off-kilter. While it picks up quite directly from the original series' cliffhanger ending, with Agent Dale Cooper stuck in the Black Lodge and his doppelgänger roaming around, Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost exhibit no fealty to the expectations of an audience who've wanted to see their favorite lumber town characters again. Those characters do appear. The first "new" scene of the series, after the opening credits, feature Dr. Jacoby, and throughout the first two hours; characters ranging from Agent Cooper, to Shelly and James, to Ben and Jerry Horne, and even Laura, Leland, and Sarah Palmer all appear. The Log Lady is back, too, making calls to Deputy Hawk.

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But along with those old faces—and more will undoubtedly show up—Lynch has assembled a huge new cast, including some famous faces. Ashley Judd is here, and so is Jennifer Jason Leigh. Meanwhile, in South Dakota, Matthew Lillard is arrested for a gruesome murder. In fact, it's not just the cast that's expanded. This return to Twin Peaks goes well outside its original location. Not only are there scenes in South Dakota, but a few in New York, as well. A flyover shot of New York's skyscrapers at night is almost as unsettling an appearance in the world of Twin Peaks as anything I could imagine.

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Cooper's doppelgänger is now roaming around, gone full criminal, with a leather jacket and hilarious long hair. What he's up to isn't entirely clear, other than avoiding his return to the Black Lodge, but he'll certainly kill a lot of people on the way. The Lillard plotline is scary and silly and weird as hell, and how it intersects with the doppelgänger is startling and intriguing. Meanwhile, in New York, a young man sits in a concrete room staring at a glass box waiting for something to happen, and when something finally does, it's one of the creepiest moments of television in years, as only David Lynch could provide. Lengthy jaunts through the Black Lodge, with its red curtains, bizarre spaces, and the evolution of "the arm" add to the weird terror.

New locations and new characters fill out the story in ways which feel scattershot, but somehow neatly so. What all the various plots have to do with each other is anyone's guess at this point, but then that's not the point to begin with. As was the case with the original Twin Peaks, meaning could be found in mood. With 16 hours to go, Lynch has plenty of space to play around with that mood, but from the start it's clear his interest in the horrors of true evil has taken on a more modern, more technological bent. In these first two hours at least, the show has provided a strangely welcome return to a familiar world unsettled by the passage of time. It looks different, and it feels different, and that's more than a little scary, but you get the feeling that's exactly what David Lynch wants.

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